Australian publishers' group NewsMediaWorks has fallen in behind Rupert Murdoch's call for Facebook to pay a 'carriage fee' for use of their content.

The group has Fairfax Media, News Corp Australia and Seven West Media's West Australian Newspapers as its members, and is chaired by News Australia executive chairman Michael Miller.

Yesterday Murdoch followed up Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's comments about rating of trusted sites with a call for a new model similar to the way in which pay-TV platforms pay for programming. "If Facebook wants to recognise 'trusted' publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies," he said in a rare public statement. "Carriage payments would have a minor impact on Facebook's profits but a major impact on the prospects for publishers and journalists."

Chief executive of NewsMediaWorks Peter Miller (pictured) told News' daily The Australian he thought it was a "cracking idea", and was confident of support from members.

"Carriage fees for trusted content would seem to describe a 'new financial model', but actually paying a reasonable fee for valuable content is not a new concept at all," he said. "In any event Rupert is starting a conversation about mighty journalism and how it is funded. It's a conversation worth having."

Wider industry support is likely, with publishers having benefitted fropm News' leadership in a number of areas - from newspaper colour in the 1990s to paywalls on news websites more recently. In the UK, News put paywalls around its Sun, Times and Sunday Times websites in 2010, but that for The Sun - with its more generic content - has since been abandoned..

Facebook 'initiative' in prioritising news reports in its news feed from publications rated as trustworthy by users drew comment from Murdoch, who is News Corp's joint executive chairman. "There is still a serious lack of transparency that should concern publishers and those wary of political bias at these powerful platforms," he said.

"Facebook and Google have popularised scurrilous news sources through algorithms that are profitable for these platforms but inherently unreliable. Recognition of a problem is one step on the pathway to cure, but the remedial measures that both companies have so far proposed are inadequate, commercially, socially and journalistically."